Is Desmond A Lousy Assassin?

here is more to assassination than violence. You are not a meandering whirlwind that leaves a trail of destruction in its wake. To know your target's habits, to eliminate only that target, and to vanish with no one suspecting your presence is the mark of a true assassin. Every hint of your involvement is a failure.

The Assassin's Creed games are, in theory at least, about exceptional assassins. Heck, the word is right there in the title. Desmond has gone through extensive physical training and experienced several lifetimes' worth of memories from the perspectives of his assassin ancestors. He should be a master of his craft. So how good is he? We came up with some theoretical targets, then asked Desmond and his sneaky video game colleagues to lay out a plan for accomplishing each hit. You can decide how he stacks up.

A member of the secret service is secretly an undercover terrorist. This organization is planning to make their move immediately after the president has been sworn in. You must infiltrate the inauguration and dispose of the threat. Discretion is mandatory. We cannot allow the press to discover that instead of conducting background checks, the secret service chooses its recruits by writing names on rubber ducks which are then randomly picked from a bathtub.

Agent 47: "I will need a costume to conceal my identity. Silently crouched against the counter in a pizzeria, I will create a distraction by throwing a coin in a dark corner. When the young man at the register turns his back to inspect the sound, I will choke him out and take the clothes off his back. This outfit will grant me full access to the target location, as pizza deliveries are granted the highest security clearance at any government event. As the president is being sworn in, I will casually place a pizza near each secret service agent. Only the terrorist will forsake his duty to indulge in a slice. It will be laced with an undetectable poison."

Desmond: "Disguises? I'm the master of those. I'll wear an outlandish hooded white outfit that's completely different from what everyone else is wearing. This will help me blend in like a chameleon because the hood comes down at the front and covers my forehead. I will push my way through the crowd of people, going out of my way to shove anyone within reach. Every time that I jostle someone, they will turn around and get a good look at me. At one point I will travel in a group of courtesans to become practically invisible. After all, such a group would never draw attention. Once I get close enough to the target to plant a knife in his or her back, I will pull out my sword and have a duel with them. After they die, I will engage pretty much everyone around me in a messy, protracted battle."

A corrupt Overseer is holed up in his palatial estate, protected by dozens of exceptionally chatty guards. We don't have any evidence that the Overseer has actually done anything wrong, but he's always sneering so he can't be up to any good. He must die.

Corvo: "I will teleport from rooftop to rooftop, evading detection by using my magical powers to observe the sightlines of guards. If a crucial chokepoint has too many guards to evade, I will slow down time itself and run through the crowd so quickly that no one will be able to process my presence. After possessing a rat to gain entrance to the target's room, I will render him unconscious with a tranquilizer dart. Then I will pick up his snoring form and drop it off a balcony. His death will appear to be a suicide. Before leaving, I will inspect the room and hastily gobble down ten cans of processed whale meat."

Desmond: "My best option would be to run in a straight line toward the target, taking to the rooftops. Dozens of guards will see me. I will throw them all to their deaths, the frantic screams of each opponent drawing a crowd of pedestrians who will clearly see me. I will only allow myself to veer off course if I see something really shiny, like a flag or a feather or a Frisbee that got stuck on a roof. When I finally reach the target, I will jump on him from above and exchange a few vaguely philosophical musings as time dramatically slows and he bleeds out. Then I will make a stealthy escape by getting into a sword fight with eighty dudes."

A high ranking military official has gone rogue. He has acquired a cache of weapons of mass destruction made entirely of highly illegal drugs. He wants to destroy America!

Sam Fisher: "I'm going to shoot out every light bulb that I come across with my silenced pistol and silenced grenades. No bulb will be safe. When I come upon a closed door, I will slide a high tech camera below it. The incredibly precise infrared lens will allow me to see any light bulbs that might be waiting in the other room. I will sneak past everyone, then growl at the target while torturing him. 'Where are the light bulbs you son of a bitch?!' I will roar, slamming his head onto a sink so hard that the porcelain shatters. Then a helicopter spotlight will illuminate us both in its horrible light. A setup. Betrayed. By my own people!"

Desmond: "That Sam Fisher guy sure does use a lot of gadgets. Did I mention that I have a few good friends who happen to be inventors? Leonardo Da Vinci and Benjamin Franklin. Maybe you've heard of them. I will borrow a fantastical prototype from one of them, something mind-blowing like a kite with a cannon on it or a crazy wooden tank. Whatever it is, it will be overkill and my clumsy rampage toward the target will attract the attention of hundreds of bystanders. There will be a ton of witnesses. It will be awesome."

As it turns out, the multinational megacorporation Evilhack Industries is not an innocent manufacturer of vending machines, but a cabal of evil hackers. They have acquired sensitive information about cybernetic implants and are planning to sell the files to a militant political group. You must take out the president of the company before the exchange can take place and attain or destroy these files.

Adam Jensen: "I will brood in my apartment for a bit. You know, have a drink and mull things over, not ask for this. Then I'll find the nearest available air vent and trust that it can get me to the target. Along the way I will stealthily crouch in front of hundreds of computers and hack them all. Most of these consoles will contain junk mail and humorous workplace correspondences, but a few should give me access to security codes and allow me to override cameras so I can sneak by undetected. When I finally reach the target, I will throw a vending machine on top of him, crushing the files in the process. It will look like an everyday accident. You won't believe how many vending machines fall out of air vents in this gritty future."

Desmond: "This sounds like the perfect time to try out this new plan that I've been working on. You see, it involves getting into a fight with dozens of people and stabbing all of them in broad daylight. It's the perfect hit."

Comments (16)

Funny stuff

Whose footprints are these?

You, Sir, just made my morning. :DI really got these "Oh, this is so stupid that it's hilarious"-chuckles while reading the mock ups. (And that in the middle of class)Though it has been said: I miss Solid Snake. Approach through a cardbord box, the typical grumpy and philosophical Snake and then there's Desmond."Whose footprints are these?!"!Great article. :D

THE TRUTH

To be fair...

To be fair, the original "assassins" or hashassins as they were called, would actually kill their targets in public in a revealing way on purpose as sort of political statement. So in actuallaity, a literall "assassin" is supposed to be cause a scene. As long as the target dies and everyone knows why he died.

Excellent article...

Waaaay back when everyone was hyped about the first Assassins Creed gameplay movie, I commented on Kotaku that this guy was literally the worst assassin ever and got nothing but indignant outrage. Sad that five games later, every Assassins Creed 3 gameplay movie I see still has all the gravitas and tension of the opening scene of Aladdin with Yakety Sax playing in the background. The games are beautiful and ambitious, but the goofy, nonsensical gameplay destroys whatever mood the writers were trying to create, and not in a fun way.

The only opinion missing is Solid Snake's. I know he's not really an assassin, but it would be a funny conclusion to the article to realize that even a mercenary running around with land mines and a rocket launcher destroying giant mechs and constantly engaging in interminable, dull conversations on his cell phone is significantly more stealthy than a supposed "assassin." I said it in 2006, and I'll say it again. Worst. Assassin. Ever.

Disguises, humph.

Those are for amauters. True stealth involves climbing up to gargoyles conveniently built inside asylums, prisons, hospital, kindergarten schools; Really, they are pretty much everywhere, especially in rooms where bad guys hang around, without ever looking up to see their impending ass-kicking.